Posts about authors other than Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff always acknowledged a debt to and love for Rudyard Kipling. She wrote a small book, a monograph, about him. I have just discovered this article in the journal of the Kipling Society, The Kipling Journal, in 1965. She wrote:
” … other people write about things from the outside in, but Kipling writes about them from the inside out.”
Philip Reeve fears that the ‘beautiful’ writing of historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff is in danger of being forgotten. Author of The Mortal Engines Quartet (someone once called it ‘alternative history’ not ‘science fiction’) and the Larklight in 2009, Reeve wrote in The Daily Telegraph of his fears.
With so many good new books for children being published all the time, I sometimes fear that the classics of my childhood are in danger of being forgotten. So I’d recommend Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, particularly Warrior Scarlet and The Eagle of the Ninth – cracking adventures, beautifully written, filled with a profound sense of the British landscape and its past.
According to the curious and enchanting Larklight website,:
Mr Philip Reeve was born and raised in the bustling seaside slum of Brighton. Like all residents of that vile town he fled as soon as he was able, and now lives in a secluded cottage on Dartmoor, where frequent encounters with gigantic house spiders and fruitless efforts to preserve his tweed and serge against the voracious moth have given Mr Reeve a deep understanding of Art Mumby’s plight. He is the author of the bestselling Mortal Engines quartet.
Source: The Daily Telegraph , July 4, 2009 ; The Guardian, September 30, 2006 Saturday Review p20.
When first talking about the impact of his Alzheimer’s disease to The Guardian in March 2008, Terry Pratchett commented that his “fiction – be it for adults or children – isn’t just comic … You can’t laugh all the time. There’s humour in the darkest places. I mean, The Lord of the Rings is a dark book. There’s an Arthurian darkness – we can fight evil, but ultimately we die.” He recalled Rosemary Sutcliff’s book Sword at Sunset, about Arthurian Britain.
Her marvellous idea was that King Arthur and his warriors were effectively the last Romano-Britons fighting against the dark forces. And you’re going to lose, but you have to go on fighting. Something like that you can add humour to. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.
Rosemary wrote a monograph about Rudyard Kipling.
‘My schooling began late, owing to a childhood illness, and ended when I was only fourteen, owing to my entire lack of interest in being educated. But I showed signs of being able to paint, and so from school I went to art school, trained hard, and eventually became a professional miniature painter. I did not start to write until the end of the War, but now I have switched completely from one medium to the other, and it is several years since I last touched paint.’ Of the Kipling book she said, ‘My reason for writing this monograph will be obvious to anyone who reads it: I have loved Kipling for as long as I can remember.’
For more posts on Kipling see here.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 